Must be the Season of the Witch

A gang swarmed several people last night in my neighborhood, attacking them with a knife and some kind of metal object and robbing them. I wonder if it had anything to do with the few recent warm days, or with St. Patrick's day. I guess not wonder--hope. In my heart I'm hoping that they're drunken revelers from the suburbs come downtown on St. Patrick's day.
As an evening worker and a fan of late night walks in my hood (and taking the back roads) this worries me.
Also in the news, our friend Joseph Fritzl is in court. According to wikipedia, he is charged with: "rape, incest, kidnap, false imprisonment and slavery, which carry a maximum 20-year term."
Reading up on a similar case in Britain which did not involve imprisonment but did result in 19 pregnancies, I was puzzled. In the latter case, the defendant received 25 consecutive life sentences and must serve a minimum of 19.5 years in prison. Why do the charges against Fritzl only amount to a maximum of 20 years? He imprisoned his daughter and their children for 24 years. It will likely be impossible for some of them to have a normal life after what has happened to them. In some ways I think that several decades of rape and enslavement are worse crimes than murder. I know that life can't be returned once it's taken, but in essence, these lives were taken as well.